About Me

The Best Ad Critic In The World™ (™ pending), also a damn good copywriter with 20+ years experience in NYC. Hire me for your in-house creative department, and I will help you make better, funnier, more interesting, and more effective ads/branded content. Samples/resume available upon request. Salary request is very reasonable.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

The Swagger Ad Dads Need To Get Got.

The New Cheerios Gang-Signs Dad

It's been well documented (if not well researched): At some point in the 1990s, Ad Dads very suddenly became moronic punchlines. I don't know who was more responsible for this—ad agencies or brands or Homer Simpson—but the tipping point was reached quickly. It was an anti-Mad Men ad movement. It was anti-creative. And it was just as sexist as all the Women As Sex Objects ads (though not as insidious).

The OG "Swagger" Dad

But in the last few years, there has been a shift in Dadvertising to Dad as Hero. That's fine. But, unfortunately, a subset of this new "Super Dad" ad concept has been the "Swagger Dad", popularized by comedian Brian Huskey in a lazy, hackneyed though widely applauded 2010 Toyota minivan ad. Like all such awkward-white-people-co-opting-black-culture ideas, it was insulting to the entire human race.

Swagger Dad #2

Now four years later Toyota, via their agency Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles, has finally released a "sequel" featuring "The Neuberts" (Christ). And since many criticized the first spot as racist, the world's leading auto manufacturer brought in Brooklyn boy Busta Rhymes to embarrass the fuck out of himself, hopefully for a very fat stack.

This video has all of the cringe and none of entertainment of the first Sienna ad. Four fucking years, and this is the best they could do. And I'm unemployed.

American Greetings—"Dad Life" (2011)

It has all of the cringe and none of the entertainment of the original video.
This took four years. And I'm unemployed.

American Greetings—"Dad Life" (2010)

The world's largest greeting card company (That's one of the Whitest phrases I've ever typed.) apparently scoped the success of the Toyota video, and dropped their own awful anthem less than two months later, pre-Father's Day. Theirs featured four Swagger Dads, including a black dad to mute racism criticism. Dockers® and St. John's Bay shirts and John Deere riding mowers and Roundup weed killer get shout-outs, though it's not clear if any of that was prearranged. Note the douchey bluetooth.

"I gotta clip for my piece..." (cellphone holder)

Cheerios and their digital ad agency Tribal Worldwide also certainly noticed the 12 million views the original Swagger Dad ad racked up. They smartly avoided the shitty studio rap track, but this dude is still just another Swagger Dad telling you#HowToDad—which includes eating and feeding your children bowl after motherfuckin' bowl of peanut butter Cheerios for "breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midnight snacks". #HowToAngioplasty

Health concerns aside, this ad was just merely bad and unoriginal, until, yep: had to throw in those slo-mo fake gang signs at the end...ahh YEAH.

What recent Dad Ad do I like?
This one, for Jell-O pudding, by cp+b.
It's real. Yo.